Infectious blogging…

I was on a blogging panel Monday afternoon at DCdotcom, an event for DC ad execs. The day was well-run and kept the 220 attendees entertained/informed.

There was a lot of interest about blogging, but only 10% of the audience had ever read a blog and only 2% had actually blogged. Wake up ladies and gentlemen! Dave Barry has a blog. GWB reads blogs.

I had the pleasure of meeting Meg Hourihan in person, but am afraid I borrowed her stomach bug. Jennifer, did you fare any better?

Hmm… blogging seems to be something you can only catch in person too. Let’s see if more DC ad folks catch the blog flu.

A Washington Post ad VP gave us his spiel. He emphaized some good stats — the web is number 1 news source for business decision makers, number 1 media during work.

My favorite line was this classic pitch: “some of our clients don’t want us to tell people how well they are doing with their online advertising — they don’t want their competitors to find out.” I liked this line because a) it is funny to hear someone from the Post resort to this genre of aluminum-siding-sales-training-school “trust me” pitch. And b) although the pitch was dripping oil, it was a good point and probably true. The neat thing about the web is that your competition can be TOTALLY ignorant about how well you are doing. There are no parking lots to check, no shelves to watch.

Of course, this can also pose a problem because people like to deal with companies that are successful… and e-businesses are still working on ways to reflect “popular” or “busy” or “buzzing” online.